The management of packet flow (traffic) in a network can problematic especially in time critical applications such as air traffic control and commodities trading. Architectures that manage network traffic employ buffers that provide a traffic queue and a router that receives the traffic and switches that direct the traffic in the traffic queue to destination nodes. However, the traffic flow rate is variable whilst the bandwidth of a network is fixed. Consequently, the speed of transmission traffic packets may become critically slow which can further result in buffer overflow.
The packets that form the traffic comprise payload bundles and overhead information such as packet network information, Flags, error correction codes, start and end of packet identification codes and an application identifier. This overhead information increases buffer size requirements and buffering delay by encumbering each packet with a larger number of bits than would otherwise be required. Furthermore, the overhead information also restricts the level of freedom for network switching to manage traffic and results in network congestion due to uncertain or unpredictable packet or payload rates.
It is an object of embodiments of the invention to at least mitigate one or more of the problems of the prior art.